MIT Professor as guest at FHI

This summer, Prof. Yang Shao-Horn from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is staying at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society with a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The stay had been delayed due to the worldwide corona pandemic.

Prof Shao-Horn is currently Japan Railway (JP) East Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with joint appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Her research focuses on developing guiding principles for designing features that enable electron storage and molecule fabrication for decarbonisation of chemicals/fuels and electrification of transportation and buildings.

Shao-Horn has pioneered the use of the electronic structure features of surface oxygen to establish universal guiding principles for catalytic functions. This concept has been widely applied to optimise catalytic activity in very diverse reactions ranging from oxygen evolution in water splitting, NO and CO oxidation, to surface oxygen exchange reactions and electrolytic oxidation in lithium-ion batteries.

In her strongly interdisciplinary research group, Prof. Shao-Horn uses both computational and experimental techniques to gain fundamental insights into the kinetics and dynamics that are crucial for (electro)chemical charge transfer at interfaces. During her time at FHI, she plans to work with local colleagues to study water-ion interactions, structure and dynamics at interfaces.